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Is it possible to have TOO MUCH RAM?

You know the saying, “You can’t have too much RAM or too much storage.”

Well, there is at least one case where a lot of RAM can cause problems.

My current desktop had 1 Gig of RAM and I recently bought an additional 2 Gigs since the price was so low. (And of course I used The AdmiN’s link to give a little back to AtA)

Wow, 3 Gigs of RAM what could possibly be bad about that? Well one night, I went to put the system into hibernate and it beeped and a balloon popped up from the system tray that said “Insufficient System Resources Exist to Complete the API.” After that, the system would only go into standby, not into hibernate. In fact the hibernate tab of the Power Options settings was completely gone.

It turns out this is a known issue and Microsoft has a patch for it. The KB article describes the exact problem I was having and states “This problem typically occurs when the computer uses 1 gigabyte (GB) or more of RAM.“

My favorite part of the article is

“This problem occurs because the Windows kernel power manager cannot obtain the memory resources that are required to prepare the computer to hibernate.“

So basically, you have so much memory that we cannot obtain enough memory! The system had no problem obtaining enough memory resources when there was only 1 Gig of RAM, but with 3 Gigs there isn’t enough.

I applied the patch offered in the article and haven’t had any problem putting the system into hibernate since.

Yes and why not? It uses far less energy than leaving the machine on all night or even sleep and saves lots of time during startup and shutdown. Hibernate uses just a little more energy than turning the machine off and I can get it back from hibernate to a usable desktop in about 30 seconds. The only reason not to use it is if you're going to power the machine off.

A bit off topic and probably useless… but I found that the command "powercfg /hibernate off" can be used to turn off hibernate and free up the HDD space. "powercfg /hibernate on" will turn it back on. No restart required.

When I contacted HP about it they said if I put in 4GB then the laptop ‘ may emit beeps or no display so we recommed using 2 GB memory module only’. But then 2 minutes later another representative emailed and said I could install it but 32bit MS OS would only show it as 3GB.

Thanks for the reply….So is it not the hardware that would be limiting me to 2GB it’s the OS? But if that was the case why are other similar aged and specced laptops etc running 4gb ram. I’ve read many threads saying you’d see at least 3GB on on 32bit OS’s.

Out of the box my vista 32 bit os has 4gb of physical memory, It shows 3454mb installed. This is due to the OS there are certain hacks and workarounds to allow the OS to let you use your 4gb but I find that they can be flaky and not stable especially in a production machine.

a fairly obvious hint why this is happening: 32-bit Operating System. In any 32-bit operating system, the virtual address space is limited, by definition, to the size of a 32-bit value:

232 = 4,294,967,296

4,294,967,296 / (1,024 x 1,024) = 4,096

As far as 32-bit Vista is concerned, the world ends at 4,096 megabytes. That’s it. That’s all there is. No más.

Addressing more than 4 GB of memory is possible in a 32-bit operating system, but it takes nasty hardware hacks like 36-bit PAE extensions in the CPU, together with nasty software hacks like the AWE API.

Unless the application is specifically coded to be take advantage of these hacks, it’s confined to 4 GB. Well, actually, it’s stuck with even less– 2 GB or 3 GB of virtual address space, at least on Windows.

OK, so we’re limited to 4,096 megabytes of virtual address space on a 32-bit operating system. Could be worse.* We could be back in 16-bit land, where the world ended at 64 kilobytes. Brr. I’m getting the shakes just thinking about segments, and pointers of the near and far variety. Let us never speak of this again.

I appreciate the info but all I need to know is whether my HP dv2699ea with it’s Intel 945GM Express chipset will take 4GB of RAM. Do you know whether this is possible, I’m not fussed if it shows up 3.5GB etc, just as long as I can get above the original 2GB’s I’ve already got?

First, it doesn’t start up that much faster. Second, you’re forgetting that what does start from hibernate is EVERYTHING that was running…including all the background tasks (garbage) that a good reboot would have kicked off. So, to start up a little faster, you are causing resources to be hogged. Ironically, slowing the system down.

These days it’s not only possible to have too much RAM, but it (having too much RAM) is a very common PROBLEM.

Try this. Right now, do ctrl/alt/del to launch task manager. In the bottom right corner, check your percentage of physical RAM usage. Note if you do the math, you will never see this hit 1.5GB or more. No matter how many programs you run.

At this moment, good quality RAM is roughly $30 per GB. Knowing that you never use more than about 1.5GB, you can max out a system’s physical RAM by buying exactly 2GB. Many systems have 4-8GB though. That is anywhere from $60 to $180 spent on extra RAM that will never be used.

That $60 to $180 wasted on extra RAM that literally does nothing could be spent on a faster CPU, a better video card, a larger hard drive, dual hard drives…there are dozens of good uses for that money.

Yes indeed, it is possible to have too much RAM. Anything over 2GB is too much, as you are paying for RAM that will literally never be used.

Hmm I come out of hibernation on my 64bit Windows 7 machine in about 20 seconds – with my apps loaded to where I left them. I have NO garbage processes running because I trim the fat and keep only necessary processes running!

I have 6gb of ram on my 64bit OS and run multiple virtual machines using them. Having too much ram is only a bad thing if you do not ever max out your system. Using Photoshop or video editing applications to render images or video can easily suck up 4 GB of ram!

Actually hibernation requires no power, it saves your current state to the hard drive. Therefore if you hibernate your computer, you can do whatever you want with the power supply but it will still boot up into your saved state, as long as you don’t screw something up physically XP

Karl,
Not sure how I found this when I was searching for something (how are things buddy???). Anyways, also, I noticed that my computer (64bit windows 7, fast processor) noticeably slowed down when I went past 6GB memory. Thus I removed my memory and now just have 6 :)

so from what i gather reading all these posts is that having “too much” ram will not physically harm you computer. Right? I have installed a 2GB card in my dell for gaming and had a dramatic increase is game speed. My wife got photoshop 10 and we are planning to put another 2GB card in to aid in the photo process. Just want to make sure that having more ram will not harm my comp. Thank you for you time